Vacuum energy of nonsupersymmetric S˜ heterotic string models

We use the free fermionic formulation of the heterotic string in four dimensions to study the vacuum structure and energy of nonsupersymmetric tachyon free models that correspond to compactifications of tachyonic vacua of the ten-dimensional heterotic string. We explore the class of heterotic SO(10) nonsupersymmetric models constructed from the S˜ model in the free fermionic formalism and investigate the dependence of the potential on the geometric moduli. This paper will explore a sample of 109 string vacua to find the frequency of viable models, classifying these vacua by the following fertility criteria: tachyon presence, number of spinorial 16/16¯ representations, vectorial 10 states, and top quark mass coupling compatibility. Of these we find those that mimic supersymmetric models with equal number of bosons and fermions at the massless level: a00=0. Tachyon free models occur with a frequency of 5.309×10−3. Furthermore, models that fulfil the rest of the phenomenological fertility conditions and the additional condition on a00 occur with probability 4.0×10−9 We analyze the partition functions and study the moduli dependence of such models, finding that almost all fertile models have finite, positive potential at the free fermionic point, with 2 out of 84 of the fertile cores having negative, finite potential. We demonstrate that the free fermionic point is not necessarily a minimum in the potential. This work provides further evidence that supersymmetry may not be a necessary ingredient of phenomenological models, recreating many of the desirable features of such models without employing supersymmetry. Published by the American Physical Society 2024